This isn’t a review, because I just don’t have that kind of time, however I’ve been glomming LJ Shen books ever since I read Broken Knight.

Broken Knight by LJ Shen

This book is so freaking good, and I love Knight Cole so much that I went back and I read Shen’s book about his parents, then proceeded to read all her other books. (Sidebar, Vicious is my favourite original All Saints sinner)

Warning, your heart will be broken several times in the best and worst way if you read Broken Knight, OMG the tears, the tears. I wish I had read all the other All Saints books first, but the emotional weight of the book was still very much felt.

I can’t say enough how much I loved both Luna and Knight, their relationship was just so complex in the most delicious ways.

Anyway, here’s the blurb from Shen’s website: (You can also read the first chapter on there)

Luna Rexroth is everyone’s favorite wallflower.
Sweet.
Caring.
Charitable.
Quiet.
Fake.
Underneath the meek, tomboy exterior everyone loves (yet pities) is a girl who knows exactly what, and who, she wants—namely, the boy from the treehouse who taught her how to curse in sign language.
Who taught her how to laugh.
To live.
To love.

Knight Cole is everyone’s favorite football hero.
Gorgeous.
Athletic.
Rugged.
Popular.
Liar.
This daredevil hell-raiser could knock you up with his gaze alone, but he only has eyes for the girl across the street: Luna.
But Luna is not who she used to be. She doesn’t need his protection anymore.
When life throws a curveball at All Saints’ golden boy, he’s forced to realize not all knights are heroes.
Sometimes, the greatest love stories flourish in tragedy.

The blurb isn’t an indication of how fucking fantastic this book is, but those of you who love a complex hero and an equally complex heroine will love it. My other recommend is to listen to this book with the Audible app. The narrators were bloody fantastic, and possibly increased my enjoyment of this incredible book.

I haven’t done one of these for a while, but I was inspired after a mini Twitter Kerfuffle yesterday. Also, I know that not many people read this blog now, so it’s a good place to posit this particular dilemma.

Scenario – You’re an author, you do ok, but nothing amazing. You have some hardcore fans who buy everything you write, but it’s not massive. You also work a full time job to keep a roof over your head and to feed your two children. Your ex left you, and he doesn’t pay you any child support, and none of your family have the means to help out. You struggle along anyway, and the money from your full time job and your writing endeavours is just enough to keep you afloat. You pride yourself on being a decent human being, you’ve always done things by the book, and as far as you’re concerned, you will continue to always try to do the right thing.

You then get laid off from your job, and all of a sudden the only income you have coming in is the money from the books you sell, and it’s literally peanuts. Your youngest child becomes ill, and you don’t have health insurance. The bills are mounting up, you can’t find a job, your rent/mortgage is due, your benefits aren’t enough to pay your bills, your rent, or the medical bills that are currently piling up. What do you do?

I’ll give you two options. Just these two options.

The first option is reaching out to your online community and other strangers on the internet, laying yourself bare to them, explaining your situation and asking them for money. You do this and set up a Go-Fund Me for people to donate. This is the honest option. The option where you forget your pride, because nothing is more important than feeding your kids. Some would say that this is the more selfless option.

The second option is that as a Kindle Unlimited author, you get paid by the number of pages that are flicked through. You’ve worked out that by adding additional material at the end of your books, you can make more money. You can ask your readers to make sure they read your books until the end so that you’ll get the maximum amount of money. This option is sketchy, because you know that anything you make means that other authors will lose out, due to how the KU system works. Authors who may be in a similar situation to you. Some would say that this the more selfish option, how dare you do this to your fellow authors? How dare you ‘steal’ from them by taking advantage of a system that’s supposed to benefit everybody equally? At the end of the day though, nobody is more important than your family, certainly not a bunch of authors who you may or may not know. Also, there’s no way you’d ever beg for money from strangers on the internet, fuck that noise.

What would you do?

Sidebar, I’m not really interested in what you’d do, that’s between you and your God, but I thought it was at least a different way of looking at things. And now I’m really done, because I have way more important things to be dealing with.

It feels weird writing that, because it doesn’t feel quite real yet. He’d had respiratory problems and I think we expected him to get well soon.

He didn’t. His kidneys started to fail, and just about all his vital organs started giving up.

Two days ago, the doctors informed us that he wouldn’t make it until the end of the week. Yesterday, we were informed that he wouldn’t make it past the day.

TTG and his mum had kept a bedside vigil for eighteen hours, and when he drove his mum home so that she could take the dog for a walk, that’s when his dad finally succumbed. He died in the hour that they were gone. Paul is inconsolable. My MIL is resolute, and determined to do what has to be done to get through this devastation. I can’t imagine the pain of losing somebody that you’d spent sixty years of your life with, but my God she’s handling this like a boss.

He isn’t the only family member or friend that I’ve lost in the past couple of years, and with every death, regardless of the circumstances, I’ve learned a few things. Firstly, tomorrow isn’t promised, so love the people in your life as much as you can. Secondly, behind every smile is a story of heartbreak yet untold, we never really know what’s going on behind closed doors. We don’t know what hardships people are suffering, we don’t know what they’re currently going through. We don’t know if they’ve just lost a child, we don’t know if they’ve just lost a husband.

As I watched my MIL deal with things this morning, with military precision, I understood that it would be easy for an outsider to assume that she’s OK. She’s not OK, not by a long shot. Like so many strong women, she’s just doing what must be done. But it’s going to take a toll on her eventually.

I’ve seen her like this at least once before. Nine years ago, she had to bury her daughter who died after a battle with cancer. The plan was always that her and my father-in-law would go first. What’s that saying? You never expect to bury your children. That’s what she had to come to terms with. Now she’s lost her best friend and husband of sixty years.

My job this morning was to be the pragmatic one, to allow my husband and mother-in-law to come to terms with their loss. My MIL wasn’t having any of it. “I don’t have time to curl up and die”, she said. So I helped her make checklists of what needed to be done. We made a list of all the people who needed to be informed. I created a Funeral Arrangements sub-list, and systematically went through all the different tasks, who would execute them, and when by. I made a shortlist of solicitors that we could use, in case we didn’t get a good recommendation from friends and family. It helped me, and it helped my MIL. For now at least. We have a plan.

Once everything is done, I know that she’ll quietly fall apart, because when all’s said and done, she just lost the love of her life.

Oh, and how do you explain to a 3 year old that the grandpa that she loved and adored so much will no longer be able to help her put her jigsaw puzzle pieces together?

I feel like every contemporary I pick up has a tattooed hero now. When did this shit start? I don’t even mean the odd ink here and there, these heroes are almost defined by their tattoos and I’m left wondering when unmarked skin became old fashioned?

I’m not really a fan of comic books, but I do enjoy the genre when various comic book adaptations end up on TV. Well with the exception of that fucking awful Iron Fist, I mean, who the fuck thought it was a good idea having The Mortal Iron Fist being played by the whitest white man you’ll ever come across, I mean the guy couldn’t even fucking… you know what, this isn’t about that shit show. Ahem. Moving on.

Anyway, as I was saying, I really enjoy watching comic book TV shows – well, as long as they have black people on them that is. Gone are the days when I watch TV that doesn’t have proper representation. With very few exceptions, I’m no longer watching TV that don’t include POCs in meaningful roles. As I declared on Twitter, I’m rooting for everybody black these days. Shout out to Issa Rae

Anyway, I was sent a link to a series of opinion pieces, written by a British blogger called Vivian. The basis of these blog posts were about the rampant racism within the comic fandom community, especially the racism as it pertains to the first and only black leading lady on a DCTV show. Iris West, or Iris West-Allen as she’s known these days, something that apparently drives the white RFGs who watch the show, batty as fuck. Heh.

The disclaimers at the beginning of the blog post made me laugh out loud: Here’s a couple of examples:

2) This second half is about racism, written by a Black woman. I talk about white people. I talk about white women. I talk about white supremacy. I talk about racism, sexism, and misogyny. I talk about the elitism and entitlement of nerd fandom. I talk about the presence and weaponization of white femininity. I talk about racial hierarchies within fandom. I talk about misogynoir. I talk about police brutality. I talk about Taylor Swift, Maria Sharapova, and Miley Cyrus. If any of these topics cause you pain, do not read any further. If any of these topics cause you anger, do not read any further. If any of these topics prompt you to use the words/phrases tumblrina, SJW, special snowflake, race-baiter, race card, libtard, “you’re the REAL racist,” or anything similar, do not read any further.

7) Also, if you happen to be, say, a white woman, and you don’t do one of the things that I say white women do, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking specifically about the white women who do those things. Seeing as I don’t have enough words, consider this my blanket “not all men/white women/people who hate X character for whatever reason are Y.”

Lol, yeah, and anybody who wanders onto this blog by accident, that goes for you too.

Vivian writes:

We finally came to look at subtext, and how what writers weave underneath their explicit storytelling can lead people to see potential for romantic relationships. However, it’s at this point that the similarities between Olicity and Snowbarry stop. Because when it comes to Subtext, Olicity shippers use what’s going on in the show to justify their shipping, while Snowbarry shippers are notorious for either misinterpreting what happens or making up scenarios to support what they want to happen. Because they want to ship Barry with Caitlin, they use any excuse to say that they’re in love. One of the reasons they do this is because they don’t like Iris. And one of the reasons they don’t like her is because she’s Black.

I’m not racist, you sigh deeply, already penning a four-thousand-word paper in your defence, I just don’t like Iris. She’s a badly-written character. She has no chemistry with Barry. She’s a bitch. She’s not a scientist. She doesn’t belong in STAR Labs. It’s not racism. It has nothing to do with her skin colour. I wouldn’t like her if she were green with purple polka dots.

The part about not being a scientist struck me hard. There’s a certain kind of snobbery that exists within these fandoms when it comes to which women are acceptable and which aren’t when it comes to comics, and some of the assholes who consume them. So basically Iris being black and not a scientist/action woman means that the racists would be out in their droves. And the fact that the titular hero loves her? Ha, those heifers would be in their feelings forever, because they just can’t imagine the main love interest being somebody who does not look like them. Apparently they find it easier to identify with a blue-skinned alien woman, than with a black skinned human one. Go figure. That racism shit is deep, man.

Vivian continues:

As you may have noticed, I’m Black and a woman, so all of these arguments are old news to me. I’ve always been morbidly fascinated with the reaction of fans who are called racist for not liking Iris. There’s generally fervent denial, first of all. Most of the time they’ll respond with what I just wrote, followed by how they like Cisco, or Joe, or Wally. Which is my first problem with fandom’s definition of racism. You see, when someone hears “you’re racist,” they tend to assume the accuser thinks they descend into ferocious fits of uncontrollable rage whenever a person who is visibly non-white dares to be onscreen. And that think that because they don’t, they can’t be racist and so their reasons are perfectly valid.

This, to be quite frank, is bullshit.

It’s always fascinated me how blind white people, and some non-black POCs are about their mostly obvious racism. I mean, it’s 2018 for fuck’s sake, and I still hear white people say shit like “I can’t possibly be racist, I like *insert another POC character who doesn’t affect their worldview*. Of course they like Joe or Wally – those characters don’t upset their standing in quite the same way that Iris does. They aren’t trying to imagine those characters or the actors themselves shagging them. So many of the female fans of The Flash are here because they find Grant Gustin hot, (listen, each to their own, but man Grant Gustin is as average a white man as you can get, so I just can’t relate) and they want to imagine themselves in place of the *usually generic white woman who ends up playing the love interest*. Iris being black affects that. They don’t look like her, and they just can’t fathom that this character that they lust after, is madly in love with the brown/black girl.

Vivian continues:

When people say “Snowbarry shippers are racist,” shippers take this to mean “Snowbarry shippers hate Iris and don’t ship Westallen because Iris is Black, and they hate Black people.” What they actually mean is “Snowbarry shippers don’t like Iris and don’t ship Westallen because Iris occupies a position normally reserved for white women. Iris does not adhere to the stereotypical portrayal of Black women in entertainment, so they are uncomfortable because they can’t point to stereotypes to deem her unworthy – though they still try. Moreover, because of the lack of Black women as leads, they find it harder to identify with her, latching onto the nearest white woman instead.

So much this. I remember watching Merlin, and scratching my head at the sheer number of fans who shipped Arthur and Morgana, despite firstly, there being no suggestion that Arthur was ever into her like that, and secondly, their familial ties to each other. I guarantee that those people who bitch and moan about West Allen being incesty, (despite the fact that canon has Barry being in love with his non-related friend Iris, before he ever moved in with them) are the same fucking moronic assholes who shipped Arthur and Morgana, and even more recent, I bet they’re the same wankers who think that Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow are the ship to end all ships. You know I’m right.

I watched the latest episode of The Flash last night, and there was a white female meta character who Barry and his team had captured in the season four opener. I forget her name, but she was the only character out of all the metas who empathized with Barry, and I know as sure as I’ve ever known anything in my life, that those racist Flash fans would have been running all over the internet proclaiming that Barry had more chemistry with her than he had with Iris. I know I’m right, because a lot of white people are predictable as fuck.

These fans are not racist because they don’t like Iris for being Black; they are racist because their actions towards her and discourse about her show that they are opposed to the position that she as a Black woman is occupying. Their ingrained bias means she’s held to a higher standard, they do not allow her to have feelings, they think she is unworthy of the love of a lead character, and they would rather she be demoted in place of the white woman on the show.”

Sleepy Hollow’s Abby Mills anybody?

But I’m not racist, you cry, missing the point entirely. Racism is not a part-time occupation that you grow out of just because you’ve watched all of Fresh Prince. If you grew up in a society where Black people are subject to harsher rules than their white counterparts, where most of the leads on network television are white with “diversity” roughly translating to one white woman and one Black man, where Black people on science fiction/fantasy shows are usually the first to be sacrificed – you are capable of racist behaviours.

I want to throw up an A-fucking-men gif right about now.

But I’m a person of colour, you point out, naively assuming that there are get of jail free cards for being racist, I can’t be racist! While I do congratulate you on your status as a person of colour, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be racist. In fact, you can be just as racist as white people, you just lack their power. Because when you are a non-Black PoC, chances are that you recognise that Black people are at the bottom of hierarchy and you are somewhere in the middle. Thanks to white supremacy, you know that you can tear down Black people in order to elevate yourself. The attitude of white people to this – thanks to a mixture of the history of slavery, colourism, and classism – pretty much boils down to “at least they’re not Black.” It’s why some fans pretend to love Linda Park (played by Malese Jow, who is half Chinese American and part Cherokee) but never actually talk about her. They would prefer Barry to be with a white girl, but hey, at least she’s not Iris. It’s why much of the racism Iris receives is from the Latin American and Asian portions of the fandom, where anti-Black racism is rampant. The racism she receives is anti-Black, which means that it is, you guessed it, exclusive to Black people. And society is rather good at being racist to Black people.

Listen….back when I used to watch Merlin, the one time I went looking for spoilers, I happened to wander into a cesspool full of hateful Merlin fans, I noticed that there were quite a few Brazilian/Portuguese rabids on there who were writing the most dreadful things about Angel Coulby. One of them even called her an ugly gorilla who needed to die. I was so shocked. That shit hurt my soul, because I just automatically assumed that these people would be rooting for the black woman and the black character, but nope, some of these motherfuckers are more racist than your average white person.

Vivian goes on to post various screencaps of the abuse that Candice Patton has received, as well as the comments made by racist fans about Iris West. Check some of them out:

The terrible thing is, this isn’t even the really bad stuff. This is pretty harmless in comparison with what comes later.

Anyway, it’s a terrific, insightful piece of writing, so I urge you to pop on over and have a read of the whole thing.

As you guys get ready to vote in a General Election (again) you may want to keep what is happening in the US right now, front and center in your mind.

Talk to everyone you know–family, friends, co-workers, strangers on the street–and make sure they fucking show up and vote.

Vote, for democracies in the West are under attack, and–as you can see if you are paying any attention to the orange menace and national embarrassment shenanigans over here–they are a lot more fragile than we want to think.

Alas, that’s not to be. Reports over at Absolute Write Bewares forum are that Ms Brashear is asking authors to sign some questionable documents in order to get their right reversions letters, plus making them wait until sometime in the summer paying the last of the royalties owed them.

What irks me is that Ms Brashear et al must have known this was coming at least a couple of months prior to closing. Why didn’t they have all their ducks in a row before making the announcement? Why didn’t they open a dialogue with their authors regarding when and how the rights reversals and last payments would be made?

It is with great sadness that I announce our intent to wind down the operations of All Romance eBooks, LLC. For the first year since opening in 2006, we will be posting a loss. The financial forecast for 2017 isn’t hopeful and we’ve accepted that there is not a viable path forward.

We realize that you have choices when it comes to shopping via the Internet. We appreciate those of you who have chosen to shop at All Romance and will miss your patronage. We’re grateful for the years we’ve been able to serve you. The site(s) will be closing down on December 31, 2016 at Midnight (Central/US) and you will no longer have access or be able to make purchases.

Please take this opportunity to finalize any transactions, download your purchases, and back up your library.

Sincerely,

Lori James

All Romance Ebooks, LLC

I have no idea whether there were any rumbles about this before now, but I confess my surprise, and my dismay. I don’t think giving customers (readers and authors/publishers) a mere three days to get everything straightened out is all that considerate. Perhaps it means it was a relatively sudden decision? If anyone knows, I’d appreciate the input.

If you have been paying any attention to world news, you may have noticed how many of the Britons who didn’t vote in the refererndum to exit the European Union have lived to regret–bitterly regret–not voting. And how many have regretted, even more bitterly, voting to leave, in ‘protest,’ believing their vote didn’t count, that it didn’t make a difference, that it was ‘just’ an expression of their discontent, and that it would make no difference to the outcome.

Do not follow in their footsteps.

Vote–and vote while conscious that every individual voice counts.

More, make sure those around you vote, and that they too are fully cognizant of the consequences of ‘protest’ voting.

…over everything, from Hillary Clinton’s fairly earned nomination as candidate for president of the US, to Bradley Cooper not actually being Chris Kyle (though he played him in the movie American Sniper), to Ghostbusters being actually a decent movie for what it is, to women having opinions online…

You obviously have serious feelings about things you know nothing about. So, here, have a quote:

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot

Who is surprised that “She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot’s life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances.”?

Answer: no woman who has dealt with men and their prejudices and delicate feelings is surprised.

Last year I had to eat my words in a really big way about ‘just reader and blogger’ Jane Line (aka Jen Frederick, author)

Now I have to eat my words about Christina ‘just kidding’ Brashear and Samhain.

I said a while back that Samhain’s announcement that they were closing their doors sometime this summer showed a lot of class (which, compared to EC-we-have-changed-our-name-ECforBooks, it did).

I did say that because I could only see the face the company showed in public, and I believed that while there were rumblings, it was a natural part of the process. People were being fired, or losing contract opportunities, etc.

Today I see that there’s another email, which has not been made public (yet?), which calls that big, honking, PUBLIC announcement a few months back, a ‘misunderstanding’ on everyone’s part.

What the actual fuck is this? I thought Samhain was a company run by a professional. More fool me.

Authors, beware–no one but you truly gives a shit about your career.

Make that the credo you live by. Make sure all your contracts have an escape clause for when publishers start behaving like assholes, and don’t sign with anyone who won’t allow you to protect yourself. The honeymoon turns to hunting moon soon enough.

Honestly? This sucks for those authors who were ready to move on. I see on twitter that several were close to getting their rights back, and had, therefore, already started the process of having new covers made, so they could republish. That money, time and effort? Well, it’s wasted, unless Samhain decides to revert those rights anyway.

Which, from the publisher’s point of view, why would they (unless it’s in the contract)? I mean, already edited and published works that continue to sell, are passive income for them, after all.

And this doesn’t even touch on those editors and cover artists who have already moved on.

Mind you, I had seen some subtle rumbling about things not smelling all that fresh in Denmark, but nothing overt enough that I could point it out with confidence, as evidence of behind-the-scenes drama or upset. After this course reversal, I’m a lot more concerned, and disappointed. From the sidelines, this seems pretty callous and careless, as least when it comes to those authors’ careers.

So I see this headline on the main page at nbcnews.com: “I was fired because of my race”

When I click through to the article, I see the actual headline is “Wendy Bell Sues TV Station, Says Firing Was Because Of Her ‘Race'” (square quotes included).

It so happens this woman is white, and was fired after writing some pretty racist, paternalistic, and condescending bullshit about an entire community, in the wake of a shooting that left five people injured; to whit:(more…)